The Twenty-Seventh City, by Jonathan Franzen

Originally published on Josh Friedlander's Goodreads Reviews. Want to write a book-thought? Just reply to this email.

It is commonly claimed (and I'd agree) - that Franzen is America's best current writer, and commonly claimed that this is his worst book - one he has even somewhat disowned. (It's a power move for a writer to say that one of their books is bad…) I actually enjoyed this one a lot, right until the last hundred pages or so in which (without spoiling anything) it took a somewhat dramatic turn, unravelled a principal character and submitted another to psychological torture and murder, which felt so unjust and pointless that I was unable to appreciate the main point of the novel, which was, I think, something about the apathy and dullness of 1980s America, whose citizens have become distracted by materialism and anomie and no longer care about nuclear war, civic engagement, or social justice. Young Franzen (he was 25 when this came out) intended to write a Pynchonesque "systems novel"; describing St. Louis on multiple levels, through the business elite, police force, ghetto, malls, youth culture, etc. and how all of these intermesh. I actually found the details about municipal ordinances and tax incentives enjoyable, adding a surprising level of detail that helped immerse me in the novel's main plot (a bizarre conspiracy by Indian expats to gentrify the downtown area via bribery, blackmail and other skullduggery). But with the exception of the main character, Martin Probst - a stock Franzen patriarchal archetype: dour, laconic, frugal, analytical, principled, Republican - most of the characters are flimsy and comical, and as the author moved on in his career he wisely shifted to his core competency, complex and claustrophobic portraits of family life.

Side point: after reading this I listened to some of this Franzen podcast, where a few writers analyse their love-hate relationship with the curmudgeonly 800-pound gorilla of American letters by reading all his books in order. On one episode the always brilliant Nell Zink mentioned an idea that she calls (following David Foster Wallace) "lexical genius", a fallacy writers believe: that knowing an exact term in the English language for everything in the world is valuable, or a substitute for genuine insight. She may be right, but this is also something I really appreciate in writers, and few do it well. (Nicholson Baker is one, and Franzen isn't bad at it either. This book taught me the etymology of Velcro!) I remember first coming across it in this lovely scene in DeLillo's Underworld:

"Sometimes I think the education we dispense is better suited to a fifty-year-old who feels he missed the point the first time around. Too many abstract ideas. Eternal verities left and right. You’d be better served looking at your shoe and naming the parts. You in particular, Shay, coming from the place you come from."
This seemed to animate him. He leaned across the desk and gazed, is the word, at my wet boots.
"Those are ugly things, aren’t they?"
"Yes they are."
"Name the parts. Go ahead. We’re not so chi chi here, we’re not so intellectually chic that we can’t test a student face-to-face."
"Name the parts," I said. "All right. Laces."
"Laces. One to each shoe. Proceed."
I lifted one foot and turned it awkwardly.
"Sole and heel."
"Yes, go on."
I set my foot back down and stared at the boot, which seemed about as blank as a closed brown box.
"Proceed, boy."
"There’s not much to name, is there? A front and a top."
"A front and a top. You make me want to weep."
"The rounded part at the front."
"You’re so eloquent I may have to pause to regain my composure. You’ve named the lace. What’s the flap under the lace?"
"The tongue."
"Well?"
"I knew the name. I just didn’t see the thing."
He made a show of draping himself across the desk, writhing slightly as if in the midst of some dire distress.
"You didn’t see the thing because you don’t know how to look. And you don’t know how to look because you don’t know the names."
He tilted his chin in high rebuke, mostly theatrical, and withdrew his body from the surface of the desk, dropping his bottom into the swivel chair and looking at me again and then doing a decisive quarter turn and raising his right leg sufficiently so that the foot, the shoe, was posted upright at the edge of the desk.
A plain black everyday clerical shoe.
"Okay," he said. "We know about the sole and heel."
"Yes."
"And we’ve identified the tongue and lace."
"Yes," I said.
With his finger he traced a strip of leather that went across the top edge of the shoe and dipped down under the lace.
"What is it?" I said.
"You tell me. What is it?"
"I don’t know."
"It’s the cuff."
"The cuff."
"The cuff. And this stiff section over the heel. That’s the counter."
"That’s the counter."
"And this piece amidships between the cuff and the strip above the sole. That’s the quarter."
"The quarter," I said.
"And the strip above the sole. That’s the welt. Say it, boy."
"The welt."
"How everyday things lie hidden. Because we don’t know what they’re called. What’s the frontal area that covers the instep?"
"I don’t know."
"You don’t know. It’s called the vamp."
"The vamp."
"Say it."
"The vamp. The frontal area that covers the instep. I thought I wasn’t supposed to memorize."
"Don’t memorize ideas. And don’t take us too seriously when we turn up our noses at rote learning. Rote helps build the man. You stick the lace through the what?"
"This I should know."
"Of course you know. The perforations at either side of, and above, the tongue."
"I can’t think of the word. Eyelet."
"Maybe I’ll let you live after all,"
"The eyelets."
"Yes. And the metal sheath at each end of the lace."
He flicked the thing with his middle finger.
"This I don’t know in a million years."
"The aglet."
"Not in a million years."
"The tag or aglet."
"The aglet," I said.
"And the little metal ring that reinforces the rim of the eyelet through which the aglet passes. We’re doing the physics of language, Shay."
"The little ring."
"You see it?"
"Yes."
"This is the grommet," he said.
"Oh man."
"The grommet. Learn it, know it and love it."
"I’m going out of my mind."
"This is the final arcane knowledge. And when I take my shoe to the shoemaker and he places it on a form to make repairs—a block shaped like a foot. This is called a what?"
"I don’t know."
"A last."
"My head is breaking apart."
"Everyday things represent the most overlooked knowledge. These names are vital to your progress. Quotidian things. If they weren’t important, we wouldn’t use such a gorgeous Latinate word. Say it," he said.
"Quotidian."
"An extraordinary word that suggests the depth and reach of the commonplace."